Flood at 7000 Feet Elevation 01

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Home Improvements and Experiences

Flood at 7000' - Impossible ?...01

Some of my Experiences as a Homeowner

This is an ongoing report of my experiences doing maintenance and dealing with some adversity around the home. My experiences are not unique, in fact the universality of what every homeowner must face is why I decided to make this journal. We all buy a house with dreams and aspirations for our family and our financial investments. Very soon we become aware that everything requires repair and maintenance, be it landscaping, paint, roof, etc. Everything begins to deteriorate from the day it is created. I've taken photos of some of my bigger projects and I'm posting them here with captions as part of a contribution to an invisible support group, other homeowners. Some of this is therapy with the intent of creating empathy and humor regarding our shared experiences.

Home Sweet Home.

Flooding doesn't leap to the mind as an issue of living on a mountain top of 7000 feet elevation. So, when the mortgage company requires flood insurance on your home as a condition of the loan it causes you to pause. How is this possible. I've always thought of flooding as a condition of low lands, near rivers, etc.

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This satellite view makes it a bit easier to understand. Flagstaff, Arizona sits at the base of higher altitude alpine mountain peaks. These peaks become snow packed in winter, hence, OUR floods are generally more in the winter or the result of Spring run off. The more common situation is when we have had snow followed by a warm trend with heavy rain that melts that snowpack. The photos below record such an event in February 1993. On a Friday, after we already had several feet of snow on the ground, with more on the San Francisco Peaks, it rained ten inches within 24 hours. On Saturday morning everyone in town awoke to a major flood, of fifty year proportions.

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Normally, this is the road to our health club and golf course. I took this photo about 8 o'clock in the morning, Saturday.

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I then drove immediately down Lake Mary Road to the northern end of Lower Lake Mary to discover that it was flooding over the highway. This meant that the dam on Upper Lake Mary was running over and that Lower Lake Mary was beyond capacity. I arrived just as work crews were attempting to deal with the emergency. The entire area was closed by the police shortly after that and we had to leave.

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This is the torrent of flood water running north away from Lake Mary into Walnut Canyon and then the San Francisco Wash, on to the Little Colorado River and eventually into and through the Grand Canyon.

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From that scene I then drove to Walnut Canyon National Monument, where I had worked recently as a volunteer. This is a photo of the flood water from Lake Mary. This is directly below the visitors' center. It was estimated that this water was flowing from between ten and eighteen feet deep. This was the first time that water had flowed through Walnut Canyon since the 1940s when Lake Mary Dam was built and the lake was created as a source for Flagstaff water. It does give one a glimpse of how Spring runoff might have looked to the Sinagua Indians who built and lived in these cliff dwellings.

This is just one graphic example of the fact that we DO have flood issues at this altitude and that as home owners we often have to deal with it. Read on...

Anecdotes and observations by JHThomas, after living over 30 years in Flagstaff, AZ

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